K8N-E Memory

[Michael-NC]

I just put together a K8N-E board, not the deluxe version, with the latest
Bios. I understand the board will not run 2 double banked dims at 400MHz. I
have two 512MB doubled banked, CorsairVS doubled banked dims and the board
will only clock them at 333MHz. Has anyone installed any 512MB single ranked
dims in this board and can reccomend a particular brand?

I bought the board at Newegg for 70 dollars along with a AMD3700 for 200
dollars that came with a free 80GB WD JB HDD. Pretty sweet deal. Although
it's a dead-end config with no upgrade options, it works for me right now.
The K8N-E was little flakey about losing the boot drive, (2 WD 75GB Raptors
in raid 0) until I disabled all other boot drives in the bios and the raid
setup is very unintuative but this board seems as rock-solid stable as the
A7N8X-Deluxe with AMD 3200 it replaced.

 

[Paul]

I just put together a K8N-E board, not the deluxe version, with the latest
Bios. I understand the board will not run 2 double banked dims at 400MHz. I
have two 512MB doubled banked, CorsairVS doubled banked dims and the board
will only clock them at 333MHz. Has anyone installed any 512MB single ranked
dims in this board and can reccomend a particular brand?

I bought the board at Newegg for 70 dollars along with a AMD3700 for 200
dollars that came with a free 80GB WD JB HDD. Pretty sweet deal. Although
it's a dead-end config with no upgrade options, it works for me right now.
The K8N-E was little flakey about losing the boot drive, (2 WD 75GB Raptors
in raid 0) until I disabled all other boot drives in the bios and the raid
setup is very unintuative but this board seems as rock-solid stable as the
A7N8X-Deluxe with AMD 3200 it replaced.

Line 18 in Table 1 of the user manual, or line 12, are the best
configurations for two double sided DIMMs. The processor has two
address busses (one is the ones complement of the other), and one
bus is connected to DIMM1, while the other bus drives DIMM2 and
DIMM3. For best results, the DIMMs should be positioned to
spread the load across the two busses, and that is what the
line 18 and line 12 entries in Table 1 are doing for you.

Try setting "Memclock Mode" to manual, then set "Memclock Value"
to DDR400. Save and exit. Insert a test floppy with a copy of
memtest86+ on it, which should be able to boot the computer on
its own, as long as the floppy is selected as the boot device.
A CD can be prepared with memtest86+ on it if you have no
floppy. Test the memory while using the new, higher memory speed
selection, to make sure everything is error free. The newer processors
are supposed to have better memory drive characteristics, and
it is possible you'll get it to work fine at DDR400. But don't
boot back into Windows until you have completed your memory
testing first. Allow at least a couple of complete passes of
memtest86+ error free, before booting Windows.

HTH,
Paul

 

[Michael-NC]

Line 18 in Table 1 of the user manual, or line 12, are the best
configurations for two double sided DIMMs. The processor has two
address busses (one is the ones complement of the other), and one
bus is connected to DIMM1, while the other bus drives DIMM2 and
DIMM3. For best results, the DIMMs should be positioned to
spread the load across the two busses, and that is what the
line 18 and line 12 entries in Table 1 are doing for you.

Try setting "Memclock Mode" to manual, then set "Memclock Value"
to DDR400. Save and exit. Insert a test floppy with a copy of
memtest86+ on it, which should be able to boot the computer on
its own, as long as the floppy is selected as the boot device.
A CD can be prepared with memtest86+ on it if you have no
floppy. Test the memory while using the new, higher memory speed
selection, to make sure everything is error free. The newer processors
are supposed to have better memory drive characteristics, and
it is possible you'll get it to work fine at DDR400. But don't
boot back into Windows until you have completed your memory
testing first. Allow at least a couple of complete passes of
memtest86+ error free, before booting Windows.

HTH,
Paul

Hi Paul. I have the dimms in slot 1 and 3 right now. I have had them in
slots one and two.

I do have manual Memclock mode and my Memclock Value is set to 400MHz. The
machine and Sandra report the fsb as 333MHz.

I believed this was "normal" for this board to do this, as 400MHz fsb with 2
dual ranked dimms is not supported in the manual. I'm under the assumption I
need to get single banked dimms for this board to get a 400MHz fsb.

Thanks.

 

[Paul]

Hi Paul. I have the dimms in slot 1 and 3 right now. I have had them in
slots one and two.

I do have manual Memclock mode and my Memclock Value is set to 400MHz. The
machine and Sandra report the fsb as 333MHz.

I believed this was "normal" for this board to do this, as 400MHz fsb with 2
dual ranked dimms is not supported in the manual. I'm under the assumption I
need to get single banked dimms for this board to get a 400MHz fsb.

Thanks.

I don't find this answer very satisfying, but here it is anyway.

http://support.asus.com.tw/faq/faq_...F-D1A2-8961-59B1-F42C18E4118A&SLanguage=en-us

You would think that if a setting was considered an "overclock",
the answer would say something like "try it and if it doesn't
work, turn it down". Instead, they seem to be "hiding under
AMD's skirts", by blaming AMD for taking the option away from
you. Maybe they think setting DDR400 when the bus is heavily
loaded, causes processor reliability issues ? Otherwise, I don't
know what their reasoning would be for following the AMD
recommendation. Certainly overclocking is not a sanctioned
activity, and they don't stop that.

On some motherboards, you can use DDR333 with command rate set to
1T, or DDR400 with command rate set to 2T. If Asus adheres to the
table from 26094.pdf (the AMD document), it would seem there is
no advantage to be gained by the user, in using command rate set
to 2T. 2T is supposed to be a tradeoff between reduced bandwidth
and allowing a higher clock speed. (2T means the address is presented
for two clock cycles, and is only strobed into the memory on the
second cycle. This gives additional setup time for the memory
address, and does make a difference.) DDR400 2T gives better
performance than DDR333 1T, so it would be nice to be able to
select DDR400.

In a previous answer, I dug up a thread on overclocking your
board. They mention here, that increasing the CPU clock, raises
the actual memory bus speed. If the CPU clock goes from 200MHz
to 250MHz, the "DDR333" setting in the BIOS gives an actual
operating speed of 333*(250/200) = DDR416. You need the ability
to drop the multiplier on the processor, in order to keep the
core speed constant, while attempting this. You also have to
keep the product of the CPU clock and the HTT multiplier (whatever
it is called in the BIOS), to less than the limit (i.e.
250 x 3 < 800). So the HTT multiplier will likely need to be
reduced by one, to try that experiment and have stability. (I've
forgotten all the rules for which multiplier settings are
available on which processors, so you'll have to experiment
and see which options work.)

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=40799

I don't have an Athlon64 (cannot afford any more upgrades :-( )
and so it is easy to forget all the cool tricks you can do
with the Athlon64 processors.

HTH,
Paul

 

[Michael-NC]

I don't find this answer very satisfying, but here it is anyway.

http://support.asus.com.tw/faq/faq_...F-D1A2-8961-59B1-F42C18E4118A&SLanguage=en-us

You would think that if a setting was considered an "overclock",
the answer would say something like "try it and if it doesn't
work, turn it down". Instead, they seem to be "hiding under
AMD's skirts", by blaming AMD for taking the option away from
you. Maybe they think setting DDR400 when the bus is heavily
loaded, causes processor reliability issues ? Otherwise, I don't
know what their reasoning would be for following the AMD
recommendation. Certainly overclocking is not a sanctioned
activity, and they don't stop that.

On some motherboards, you can use DDR333 with command rate set to
1T, or DDR400 with command rate set to 2T. If Asus adheres to the
table from 26094.pdf (the AMD document), it would seem there is
no advantage to be gained by the user, in using command rate set
to 2T. 2T is supposed to be a tradeoff between reduced bandwidth
and allowing a higher clock speed. (2T means the address is presented
for two clock cycles, and is only strobed into the memory on the
second cycle. This gives additional setup time for the memory
address, and does make a difference.) DDR400 2T gives better
performance than DDR333 1T, so it would be nice to be able to
select DDR400.

In a previous answer, I dug up a thread on overclocking your
board. They mention here, that increasing the CPU clock, raises
the actual memory bus speed. If the CPU clock goes from 200MHz
to 250MHz, the "DDR333" setting in the BIOS gives an actual
operating speed of 333*(250/200) = DDR416. You need the ability
to drop the multiplier on the processor, in order to keep the
core speed constant, while attempting this. You also have to
keep the product of the CPU clock and the HTT multiplier (whatever
it is called in the BIOS), to less than the limit (i.e.
250 x 3 < 800). So the HTT multiplier will likely need to be
reduced by one, to try that experiment and have stability. (I've
forgotten all the rules for which multiplier settings are
available on which processors, so you'll have to experiment
and see which options work.)

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=40799

I don't have an Athlon64 (cannot afford any more upgrades :-( )
and so it is easy to forget all the cool tricks you can do
with the Athlon64 processors.

HTH,
Paul

Thanks Paul, I appreciate your efforts. I decided I'm not going to overclock
my personal machine long ago. Too much time and headache. I need to find out
which single ranked dimms will work in this board and then make a decision
whether to purchase or not. One of this year's resolutions is to knock back
the upgrade budget. Even though this setup was a sweet deal, my old K7N8X
deluxe and XP3200 with the same 1GB of DDR400, Raptor Raid 0 array and
6800GT I'm using in this setup was more robust enough for what I do and that
includes games.

I bought a nice little combo on Newegg for 100 bucks before X-mas. A Sempron
2600 that is supposed to overclock like mad. It came with a Biostar KNH8A
mother-board. It's still sitting in the garage as I haven't had the time to
set it up up.


Regards,

Mike